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secration, now exchanged their open hostility for secret opposition. While professing outward union, they withheld their support in everything. They treated Basil with marked slight and shewed a complete want of sympathy in all his plans (Ep. 98). He complains of this to Eusebius of Samosata (Epp. 48, 141, 282). This disloyal behaviour caused him despondency and repeated attacks of illness. He overcame all his opponents in a few years by firmness and kindness, but their action had greatly increased the difficulties of the commencement of his episcopate.

Basil had been bishop little more than twelve months when he was brought into open collision with the emperor Valens, who was traversing Asia Minor with the fixed resolve of exterminating the orthodox faith and establishing Arianism. No part of Basil's history is better known, and in none do we more clearly discern the strength and weakness of his character. "The memorable interview with St. Basil," writes Dean Milman, "as it is related by the Catholic party, displays, if the weakness, certainly the patience and toleration of the sovereign—if the uncompromising firmness of the prelate, some of that leaven of pride with which he is taunted by St. Jerome" (Hist. of Christianity, iii. 45). Valens had never relinquished the designs which had been interrupted by the revolt of Procopius, and he was now approaching Caesarea determined to reduce to submission the chief champion of orthodoxy in the East. His progress hitherto had been one of uniform victory. The Catholics had everywhere fallen before him. Bithynia had resisted and had become the scene of horrible tragedies. The fickle Galatia had yielded without a struggle. The fate of Cappadocia depended on Basil. His house, as the emperor drew near, was besieged by ladies of rank, high personages of state, even by bishops, who entreated him to bow before the storm and appease the emperor by a temporary submission. Their expostulations were rejected with indignant disdain. A band of Arian bishops headed by Euippius, an aged bishop of Galatia and an old friend of Basil's, preceded Valens's arrival with the hope of overawing their opponents by their numbers and unanimity. Basil took the initiative, and with prompt decision separated himself from their communion (Bas. Epp. 68, 128, 244, 251). Members of the emperor's household indulged in the most violent menaces against the archbishop. One of the most insolent of these was the eunuch Demosthenes, the superintendent of the kitchen. Basil met his threats with quiet irony, and was next confronted by Modestus, the prefect of the Praetorium, commissioned by the emperor to offer Basil the choice between deposition or communion with the Arians. This violent and unscrupulous imperial favourite accosted Basil with the grossest insolence. He refused him the title of bishop; he threatened confiscation, exile, tortures, death. But such menaces, Basil replied, were powerless on one whose sole wealth was a ragged cloak and a few books, to whom the whole earth was a home, or rather a place of pilgrimage, whose feeble body could endure no tortures beyond the first stroke, and to whom death would be a

mercy, as it would the sooner transport him to the God to Whom he lived. Modestus expressed his astonishment at hearing such unusual language (Greg. Naz. Or. xx. 351; Soz. vi. 16). "That is," replied Basil, "because you have never before fallen in with a true bishop." Modestus, finding his menaces useless, changed his tone. He counselled prudence. Basil should avoid irritating the emperor, and submit to his requirements, as all the other prelates of Asia had done. If he would only yield he promised him the friendship of Valens, and whatever favours he might desire for his friends. Why should he sacrifice all his power for the sake of a few doctrines? (Theod. iv. 19). But flattery had as little power as threats over Basil's iron will. The prefect was at his wit's end. Valens was expected on the morrow. Modestus was unwilling to meet the emperor with a report of failure. The aspect of a court of justice with its official state and band of ministers prepared to execute its sentence might inspire awe. But judicial terrors were equally futile (Greg. Nys. in Eunom. p. 315). Modestus, utterly foiled, had to announce to his master that all his attempts to obtain submission had been fruitless. "Violence would be the only course to adopt with one over whom threats and blandishments were equally powerless" (Greg. Naz. Or. xx. p. 350). Such Christian intrepidity was not without effect on the feeble, impressionable mind of Valens. He refused to sanction any harsh measures against the archbishop, and moderated his demands to the admission of Arians to Basil's communion. But here too Basil was equally inflexible. To bring matters to a decided issue, the emperor presented himself in the chief church of Caesarea on the Epiphany, A.D. 372, after the service had commenced. He found the church flooded with "a sea" of worshippers whose chanted psalms pealed forth like thunder, uninterrupted by the entrance of the emperor and his train. Basil was at the altar celebrating the Eucharistic sacrifice, standing, according to the primitive custom, behind the altar with his face to the assembled people, supported on either hand by the semicircle of his attendant clergy. "The unearthly majesty of the scene," the rapt devotion of the archbishop, erect like a column before the holy table, the reverent order of the immense throng, "more like that of angels than of men," overpowered the weak and excitable Valens, and he almost fainted away. When the time came for making his offering, and the ministers were hesitating whether they should receive an oblation from the hand of a heretic, his limbs failed him, and but for the aid of one of the clergy he would have fallen. Basil, it would seem, pitying his enemy's weakness, accepted the gift from his trembling hand (ib. p. 351) The next day Valens again visited the church, and listened with reverence to Basil's preaching, and made his offerings, which were not now rejected. The sermon over, Basil admitted the emperor within the sacred veil, and discoursed on the orthodox faith. He was rudely interrupted by the cook Demosthenes, who was guilty of a gross solecism. Basil smiled and said, "We have, it seems, a Demosthenes who cannot speak